We’ve featured bubble wrap before but many of the (great!) suggestions were for big pieces – installation around plants, shower curtains, . However, Aine Palmer has asked about smaller pieces:

In our local supermarket, the punnets of strawberrys all have a small piece (3×4 being the smallest, and the largest not too much bigger) of bubblewreap at the bottom. Not stryofoam peatnuts, but good old fashioned bubblewrap. Does anyone have a good idea for what to do with these?

We’ve had an email from headteacher Carole Brautigam:

We are a small rural school for 4-9 year olds. We are currently working towards our eco-schools bronze award. We are keen to recycle the milk cartons that the children use.

We’ve covered the recycling of tetrapak before – there are a few companies that recycle it – but I wonder if there are some particularly primary-school suitable re-use suggestions for the little containers…?

I’ve just gone to use our loofah sponge (aka luffa/loofer) in the shower and noticed it was black with mould along one side. I thought I’d been really good and let it dry thoroughly after each use but I guess I’ve slipped up somewhere, it’s stayed soggy and the mould has taken advantage.

The thought of using something mouldy as a body scrubber doesn’t really appeal but obviously I’m not just going to throw it away. So what other options are there?

It’s a natural product (not a synthetic copy) so as a minimum, I could probably compost it – but I’d like to re-use it if possible. Any suggestions?

(Photo by Jerry Crimson Mann on WikiCommons)

We’ve had an email from Ciara Fletcher:

My colleagues at work gave me a beautiful bunch of flowers for my birthday but it seems to be wrapped in about 10 yards of cellophane!! What can I do with it? It’s mostly clear with a cute white flower design on it but I can’t think what to do with it because it’s so noisy!

If you grow flowers yourself, you could reuse it if you ever want to give a bunch to anyone else – but aside from that, I’m out of ideas. Any suggestions?

(Oh, and by the way Ciara, here are some suggestions for re-using the flowers when you’re done with them.)

(Photo from Ciara)

A neighbour is throwing out some old seagrass mats. They’re about 6ft long (2m) by 4ft wide (120cm) but are water/mud damaged up the entire length of one side.

They’re a basic horizontal weave – like really, really big bamboo placemats – so are quite flexible if you roll them with the weave, but hard to roll against it (if that makes sense).

Any suggestions about what could be done with them?

(I’m calling it seagrass matting because that’s what it looks like to me – if I’m wrong though, please let me know what it is.)